So Craig Hicks in Chapel Hill, NC, a father of two, shot in the head, execution-style, three college students in his condo complex: a 23-year-old man, his 21-year-old wife of only a few months, and the wife’s visiting 19-year-old sister. All the victims happened to be Muslim, and the women wore traditional Muslim dress. They were murdered inside the condo the newlyweds shared, presumably after letting Hicks in the door.

Hicks later turned himself in to police and his wife made a statement that the murders weren’t because her husband hates Muslims. No, her husband’s beef was over a parking space.

Oh, OK. That sounds SO much more reasonable.

By all appearances, it was a little of both. We may learn that Hicks is a man who pays attention to just enough news or right-wing propaganda to think all Muslims place no value on human life because they allow an Islamic lunatic fringe group (ISIS) to rampage among them in the Middle East, destroying towns and killing mostly other Muslims.

And Hicks has the good fortune to live in a country where any idiot can own a gun and think it’s a good idea to murder THREE people over a parking space because they shouldn’t mind being dead.

There’s plenty of blame to go around here, but I place most of it on a cowardly Congress for allowing the NRA to bully it into continuing to give even the stupidest humans the right to bear arms.

Just like in the Muslim world with ISIS, when is the body count in the U.S. ever going to be high enough for decent people to start demanding strict federal gun control laws to rein in the madness?

I say “federal” because the states can’t handle it. In Virginia, it’s perfectly legal for kids UNDER AGE FOUR to shoot firearms.

So what will we tolerate next, toddler-inflicted fatalities over who gets to ride the swings at daycare?

After two grisly beheadings, President Obama has finally stopped dithering and plans to swat at ISIS with air strikes and squander more money and men to train local troops and rebels who, at any moment, might toss their American-made weapons to ISIS and run like little girls.

It wouldn’t matter if Obama decided to send 300,000 ground troops to rampage through Syria and Iraq (again). Ten years from now, a fresh generation of twisted Muslims will still be committing mayhem.

The only real fix here is for Muslims in the region to decide enough’s enough, unify against their own lunatic fringe, and stamp it out themselves.

But when do Muslims ever do that? Never. Instead, they just follow our lead.

The U.S. has no grounds for complaint about ISIS when we tolerate — legally sanction and even glorify— terrorism just as brutal right here at home.

Reading excerpts from Obama’s speech today, I got a hearty laugh at these priceless gems:

“We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are.”

“This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.”

Buddy Boy, where have you been? Look out the White House windows. Our streets run red, too. Our terrorists are “Defenders of the 2nd Amendment.” Newspapers across America chronicle their atrocities every day. They’re a band of thugs, sane and insane, armed to the teeth, who may randomly mow down adults, children, and pets in their homes and in public places.

NOBODY is safe from being senselessly killed anywhere, any time.

How is this any different from what ISIS does? Are you saying one man cutting off another man’s head is worse than a 9-year-old girl blowing off her shooting instructor’s head with an Uzi?

And here it’s all perfectly legal. Our terrorists only face penalties if they get caught and their attorneys can’t lie well enough to convince a judge and jury they DIDN’T do it.

Why are we in a lather about ISIS when, if they were here, they could get their hands on assault weapons and continue killing, with the added assurance that a good chunk of the population would just shrug it off and defend their right to be armed?

The world is in a sorry state when civilized nations with good reason to fear ISIS look to the United States for leadership in confronting irrational evil.

Here I go again with a Bourdain post, but he just gave a great interview to Blogs of War and I have to say it: If there’s one thing about Anthony Bourdain I admire, it’s his willingness to stick his neck out for the underdog.

It’s never PC to even hint that anything Israel says or does is ever wrong, but Bourdain continues to make a strong case for changing the tragic reality of everyday Palestinians trapped in Gaza and the West Bank.

As I write this, Israel continues its bombing of Palestinian civilians in their homes, with virtually no hope of escape. Israel’s rationale is that every Palestinian boy playing on the beach, every patient lying helpless on a hospital operating table or in the ICU, could be a Hamas enabler and is, therefore, fair game.

Meanwhile, the world stands by, impotent in the face of such crazed blood-thirst.

By yesterday’s numbers, 695 Palestianians are dead (166 of them children, and probably more than 70% of them civilians, according to the UN).

Israel has 32 casualties. Of those, 3 were civilians, and 3 of the 29 soldiers killed were by friendly fire.

Sorry, Israel, but by NO definition on earth does such wholesale, one-sided slaughter qualify as self-defense.

We get it. Both sides’ leaders would love to wipe out each other’s people. Hamas can clearly never achieve it. But, Israel is proving that it can — and it will if someone doesn’t make it stop.

More of us need to follow Bourdain’s lead and speak up for the Palestinians who are allowed no voice. They’re dying for no good reason.

ISIS is having a blast rampaging through Iraq, seizing buildings and oil fields, and showing everybody what badass al-Qaeda rejects they are.

But what will they do with Iraq once they’ve got it? When they realize how tedious running a country is, will they decide to stick with their strength and go off to conquer the next weakest link?

The Iraqi government would love for the U.S. to swoop in and kick ISIS’ butt so Iraq’s so-called leaders can keep their own skirts clean and their money in the bank. And why not? We’ve been willing before to pour limitless blood and money down that rat hole.

But this is the same government that wanted us completely OUT in 2011 and forced Bush to agree, leaving that clean-up job for Obama so Dick Cheney can now blame Obama for doing it.

Sadly, it’s the innocent Iraqi people who pay for our stupidity. Saddam Hussein understood Iraq better than that useless turd we left in the punchbowl, Nouri al-Maliki. We have only ourselves to blame for giving ISIS a reason to exist.

We abhor Koran-misquoting nuts who grasp at any flimsy reason to start “holy” wars, yet we tolerate our own Bible-misquoting nuts who can walk down almost any American street armed to the teeth, blow away innocent people on deluded pretenses, and then walk free to do it again.

“Gun rights” is our euphemism for terrorism in the U.S., and it’s legal. We’ll even defend people’s right to commit it on a mass scale. So what right have we to claim moral superiority over ISIS or any other terrorists?

Hell, we give national face time to blood-thirsty lunatics like Cheney, who scream the loudest for war every time people in the Middle East start killing each other over silly stuff, just like we do here, as if THEY’RE the only ones with a problem.

So, as a token, 300 of our soldiers are being sent back into harm’s way to play Dear Abby in combat boots, dispensing priceless “advice” to the American-trained Iraqi army, like…

“Keep your clothes on. No war was ever won by soldiers running away in their skivvies.”

“When ISIS attacks, instead of giving them your gun, aim it at them and pull the trigger.”

I say, Iran is much better situated and equipped to sort out the Iraq mess. We should leave it alone. America needs to gets its own house in order before it can preach peace to the Middle East. Our hypocrisy just makes things worse.

Most people love movies where the hero looks doomed until the U.S. cavalry charges over the hill and saves him. Such relief was the first reaction to hearing Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was being rescued from 5 years as a Taliban POW in Afghanistan…

…Until we learned we were swapping 5 terrorists at Guantánamo for him and Congress wasn’t told. Of course, we all know how that would have played out. Congress would rather let a million Bergdahls rot in Afghanistan than cooperate with Obama.

But then circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture began trickling out from soldiers who were there, like former Army captain Nathan Bethea, who believes Bergdahl deserted, and claims the rest of the troops were ordered not to talk about it.

And we heard that Bergdahl first shipped his personal belongings home, then wrote a note before he disappeared stating he was off “to start a new life” and left behind all his Army-issued protective gear. And he wasn’t lost on a night patrol, but deliberately left the base and made himself easy pickings for the Taliban.

And it’s possible that a bunch of soldiers doing their jobs were killed directly or indirectly as a result of Bergdahl’s actions and the subsequent search, but that’s yet to be confirmed.

And, bizarrely, Bergdahl got promoted to sergeant while he was missing, even though his superiors knew the fishiness of his disappearance. That was government bureaucracy at its finest.

On one paw, I’m proud of our commitment to bring home all American troops, even the crazies and the cowards. If they were bad soldiers, we can take comfort in the fact that the VA will treat them like dirt for the rest of their lives, or even let them die for want of medical care. What goes around…

On the other paw, I fear Bergdahl will become Obama’s good deed that doesn’t go unpunished when the freed terrorists shortly resume their quest to wipe out Americans — now with a REAL axe to grind against us.

Bergdahl remains in Germany being treated like a delicate flower, too physically and emotionally fragile to answer any questions about how or why the hell he got himself captured. It’s the American way to give him plenty of time to concoct a great story for the talk show rounds — you know they’re coming.

The cynical part of me wonders about the White House’s timing. Was Bergdahl meant to “Wag the Dog” and deflect attention from the VA mess?

Or was Obama’s intent to create another “We Got bin Laden!” moment by rescuing a hero? But like most everything Obama touches these days, it backfired because his minions didn’t do their homework and left Obama wiping egg off his face — yet again.

And this cat questions the wisdom of humans who, in the face of someone’s feckless disregard for their own safety — be it a troop or a tourist — decide to unmake the bed these fools have chosen to lie in and go to extraordinary means and expense to rescue them.

After sitting many hours this week with paws pensively curled, reading and watching news unfold on this “greatest mystery in modern aviation history,” I’ve got some ideas.

Ground sources lost contact with the plane less than an hour after takeoff, yet the plane continued transmitting pings for 4 hours. And military radar may have spotted it 45 minutes after last official contact.

They think it deliberately turned west and continued on a route plotted between established waypoints, which would indicate carefully premeditated effort to further avoid detection.

It seems that mechanical failure should be the most far-fetched scenario now. Maps showing how far the plane could have traveled in 4 hours include a LOT of land.

No wreckage or bodies have surfaced in a week, either near the oil slicks nor anywhere else.

If it was a third-party hijacking or sabotage, why crash the plane where nobody could ever find it, ascertain what happened, or who did it? The act would become totally pointless.

I think all signs indicate the plane landed somewhere, intact, and a group of terrorists are holding 239 hostages, getting more giddy with every hour of the futile search they watch on CNN.

We don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars the countries searching will have to squander before the perps think it’s enough to reveal themselves.

Perhaps the world will unwittingly tip the bad guys’ hand by losing interest and giving up. When CNN starts saying “MH370” and “Amelia Earhart” in the same sentence, the terrorists had better speak up before nobody gives a damn.

We just saw Putin flip the world the bird by invading Crimea. I suspect this missing plane could be Al Qaeda’s way of announcing, “We’re back in the game, baby!”

It would have been Step One on board to confiscate all electronic devices so the passengers would have no way of contacting help. If they’re now on an island or in some other remote location, such devices probably wouldn’t work anyway.

I’m hoping I’m right because it means that those innocent people still have a chance of surviving this. Rescuers just need to quit playing in the water and go find them.

Watching Charlie Rose’s amazing interview with Bashar Assad was like seeing Saddam Hussein resurrected. The only difference is that “weapons of mass destruction” are now “weapons of chemical warfare.”

We KNOW someone in Syria has them, because they’ve killed innocent people. But we only have the word of John Kerry (the white Colin Powell, before Iraq?) that Assad used them.

And now Obama’s itching to start a teeny-weeny little war. Like we’re all stupid enough to believe there is such a thing.

Sorry, Obama. No dice. Congress had better listen to cats and the majority of Americans and squash this harebrained scheme. Here’s why…

Dead is dead. Once you’re gone, how you got there is moot.

We’ve been perfectly fine with Assad killing scores of his people with guns and bombs, so where do we get off saying he stepped over a “red line” with sarin (if he did)?

Obama had some nerve last night trying to whip up outrage over Syrian children dying, “foaming at the mouth, gasping,” when he twiddles every time an American assembles an arsenal and mows down scores of people of all ages — including kids.

And our own depraved citizens respond to such atrocities by dashing out to stock up on MORE guns and bullets.

We’re good with an armed creep (George Zimmerman) trolling his neighborhood and wasting an unarmed black kid. Heck, our LAWS make his behavior perfectly acceptable, and encourage him to go buy more guns so maybe he’ll kill his estranged wife.

Our national sport, football, is among the most brutal. We cheer players who repeatedly bash into each other, knowing they’re probably getting head injuries that will hasten dementia and suicidal behavior as they age.

We kill criminals by lethal injection. Isn’t that basically deadly gas delivered as a liquid?

When it comes to killing, we have no high horse to get on. Our people are just as barbaric as any country in the Middle East. We just take a different approach sometimes.

The way to stop killing is NEVER more killing. Obama should know that.

The way this is unfolding, any military action is doomed to fail. We can let Congress set conditions — 90 days max, no ground troops — and our idiot media will blab it to the enemy so they know exactly how to respond and how to wait us out. Brilliant.

So billions of dollars we don’t have are squandered, people die, nothing is accomplished, and the Middle East has another reason to hate us.